'The happy man feels at ease only because the unhappy bear their burden in silence, and without that silence happiness would be impossible...There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man someone tapping with a little hammer as a continual reminder that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her claws sooner or later, misfortune will strike - disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see him or hear him, just as now he neither sees nor hears others. But there is no man with a little hammer; the happy man lives at ease, and petty daily cares stir him, like the wind in the aspen tree - and all is well with the world.'

'Between "God exists" and "There is no God" lies an entire vast field that a truly wise man traverses with great difficulty. A Russian (an uneducated man) knows only one of these two extremes, and finds the middle ground between them uninteresting; of that he usually knows nothing or very little'

-Anton Chekhov